Tag: Ralph Baer

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Tundra Telegram: Books To Help You Level Up

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where Wii we plumb readers’ minds and try to Switch you on to some books that are Peachy.

You’d have to be hiding in a drainpipe to not know that the long-anticipated Super Mario Brothers Movie graced movie theatre screens across North America yesterday. Though the world’s most popular video game has been adapted into film before (we’ll never forget you, Bob Hoskins), excitement for this new animated film has been so massive, you’d think it ate a red mushroom.

To mark the occasion, we’re recommending some books about video games. Whether it’s about making games, playing them, or finding yourself inside one – no Dry Bones about it, we have books for all ages that are the perfect match for gamers.

PICTURE BOOKS

To get to Mario, you need to start with the first home video game console, and that was created by Ralph Baer, the subject of the picture book biography Blips on a Screen by Kate Hannigan and Zachariah OHora about Ralph Baer, a pioneer in the video game revolution. The book tells how a refugee from Nazi Germany used his tech skills to make video games you could play in your own home a reality – and without Ralph, there might never have been a certain heroic Italian American plumber.

Do Not Eat the Game! is a hard instruction to follow when your video game is full of mushrooms and turnips, but it’s also the name of a fun picture book by Matthew McElligott. Full disclosure: the book is about a board game, rather than a video game. But it is about competition, playing well with others, and being a good loser. Plus, the kid’s opponent is a monster (not unlike Bowser), so there are plenty of parallels.

Finally, we only have the audiobook rights, but the American Girl book Courtney Changes the Game by Kellen Hertz is all about a gamer girl. Set in 1986, at the height of arcade popularity, protagonist Courtney is the best gamer at the arcade, and is frustrated there aren’t more girl characters in video games. When a school project allows her to create her own video game, she develops a girl who can handle whatever the bosses throw her way – something Courtney struggles with in real life.

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

If only young Courtney in 1986 could have read 2023’s Rebel Girls Level Up: 25 Tales of Women in Gaming and Tech. The book highlights the women designing games, leading gamer communities, and paving the way for more women to enter the gaming and tech industries. This includes people like Mabbel Addis, the first female video game designer (back in 1964!), and Aya Kyogoku, who directed Animal Crossing: New Leaf, among others.

How about a book written by an actual video game developer and writer? My Video Game Ate My Homework by Dustin Hansen, is about a thirteen-year old kid who is failing in his science class, but when he and his friends magically wind up in a virtual world, he excels in battling all sorts of digital creatures and solving a number of puzzles in order to get home. (This is, as they say, something for which he has trained his entire life.)

A book series in that same vein but fictional is the Girls Who Code books by Stacia Deutsch, Jo Whittemore, and Michelle Schusterman. Published in partnership with the organization Girls Who Code, the books follow four girls: Lucy, Sophia, Maya, and Erin – strangers at first – who form a strong friendship in a new computer coding club at school. (Though sadly, while they code everything from apps to the tech at the school play and even participate in a hackathon, they don’t create a video game.)

If reading about a group of four kids with some connection to video games is your bag, then Player vs. Player: Ultimate Gaming Showdown by M.K. England and Chris Danger should be, too. Four kid gamers (“The Weird Ones”) take on 63 other teams in an epic tournament of Affinity, a battle-royale-style game. And out this summer is Player vs. Player: Attack of the Bots, a book that brings back the kid gamers, who have since gone pro and set up their own streaming channel. Only one problem: one-fourth of their crew – Wheatley – is missing. In another proverbial castle, one might say.

YOUNG ADULT

Winnipeg politician and author Wab Kinew was inspired by video games like Minecraft and Fortnite to build his immersive Floraverse series. In Walking in Two Worlds, readers meet Bugz, an Indigenous girl living on the Rez who happens to be a dominant player in a massive multiplayer online game. The Everlasting Road, the follow up, follows Bugz’s adventures in the ‘Verse, as she builds a weapon and virtual friend Waawaate, who fills the hole left by the death of her brother – with, as you might expect, problematic results. (It’s a book that tackles video games and grief more elegantly than Luigi’s Mansion.)

Another YA series that looks at the push-and-pull of the virtual gaming world is Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller’s Otherworld, in which gamers can leave your body behind to enter into a virtual reality game so addictive users never want to leave. Of course, in the remaining books in the trilogy – OtherEarth and OtherLife – young gamers Sam and Kat discover the threats inherent in the VR gaming system, and escape The Company, who would do anything to keep those threat secret!

Warcross and Wildcard by Marie Lu explore the nightmarish possibilities of immersive gaming that involves millions of players. Teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down Warcross players who bet on the hugely popular game illegally. But when she is hired by the game’s creator, young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, to hack into the International Warcross Championship to uncover a security problem, she digs up – you guessed it – a dark conspiracy the likes a Koopa could never dream of.

For something a bit more optimistic, there’s Game On, a charming YA anthology edited by Laura Silverman all about games. The fifteen stories include Nina Moreno’s fan favorite adorable love story about two girls who find each other via a farming, Animal Crossing-esque video game. Just reading about it makes my heart go for a speed run.

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Tundra Telegram: Books That May A-Muse You

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we dig down into the themes that have readers agitated and recommend some books for literary bliss and feeling good.

This Thursday, Tundra publicists Evan and Sam will venture out to another concert together (following a successful outing to Carly Rae Jepsen and Bleachers) – this time to see British space-paranoia prog rockers Muse at their Toronto concert date at the Rogers Centre, where much melodic caterwauling and epic guitars will be heard.

To celebrate, we’ve assembled children’s books – from picture books to YA – that sound like they should be Muse songs (whether or not the content of the books fit the band’s themes of technological fear, government oppression, and/or visitors from outer space at all). Plug in, baby, and enjoy!

PICTURE BOOKS

With a title that sounds like it could be a 10-minute, three-act epic from the boys in Muse, Time Is a Flower by Julie Morstad is a playful and poignant exploration of the nature of time and a 2021 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book. From a seed that grows into a tree to a memory captured in a photo and a sunbeam that crosses the floor, this book will have kids thinking about time in ways like never before.

The Darkest Dark by Chris Hadfield, Kate Fillion, and The Fan Brothers was written by an actual astronaut, and definitely has a title about outer space poetic enough to make our list. “The darkest dark” of the title refers to outer space, a place young Chris Hadfield dreams of exploring as an astronaut – a dream that intensifies as he family watches the 1969 moon landing. Only one problem: he needs to get over his fear of the dark at bedtime.

The songs of Muse tend to stay above ground (and far above in some cases – into outer space), but we can’t help but think The Aquanaut by Jill Heinerth and Jaime Kim would fit their oeuvre. The content at first seems far from Muse lyrics: the book is about a girl who feels too young and too far away from her dreams of exploring the world. But she imagines things like her bedroom as a space station and her body growing flippers or tusks. (Now we’re talking!) The book looks at how the author Heinerth’s childhood wonder led to her accomplishments and experiences as an underwater explorer and photographer.

Blips on a Screen may be all that we are on a Supreme Being’s iPad, but it’s also a book by Kate Hannigan and Zachariah OHora about Ralph Baer, a pioneer in the video game revolution. This picture book biography chronicles how a refugee from Nazi Germany used his tech skills to make video games you could play in your own home a reality. Not only did he create the blueprint for the first home video game console, he invented the Simon electronic game!

The extraterrestrial and intergalactic become the intimate in The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer and Ekua Holmes. The book blends science and art, describing how the Big Bang that began the universe hurled stardust everywhere, and the ash of those stars turned into planets – and into us! We are all the stuff of stars, and this picture book describes just how that happened!

Resist! by Diane Stanley sounds like a Muse track, though the subtitle Peaceful Acts That Changed Our World makes it sound a little less metal. Nevertheless, young readers will be inspired by these accounts of activists who fought back with music and marches, sit-ins and walk-outs to defend the disenfranchised and demand reform, refusing to back down even in the face of violent oppression. And since Muse sings “love is our resistance,” maybe this picture book is the most fitting comparison title!

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

Apocalypse abounds in both the songs of Muse and Eric Walters’s Fourth Dimension, a look at one teenager and her family in the midst of the disintegration of society after a massive and mysterious outage that knocks out all modern amenities. Emma and her family canoe to an isolated island, but find they are far from safe, as people become increasingly desperate to find food and shelter. Time to panic!

Pluto Rocket by Paul Gilligan technically has a subtitle – New in Town – that makes it sound less like a song. But “Pluto Rocket” itself is a perfect Muse song. Plus, the graphic novel for young readers is all about an alien! This alien happens to be very friendly and just wants to find out what life in the neighborhood (a.k.a. Earth) is really like, and luckily, she meets a streetwise pigeon (Joe Pidge) who is very happy to inform her.

What is a “ghostlight”? It sounds intriguing yet celestial enough to be a Matt Bellamy metaphor, but Ghostlight is actually a supernatural spook-fest from acclaimed and bestselling author Kenneth Oppel. Gabe, a young tour guide at a historic lighthouse, accidentally awakens the ghost of a dead girl, and has to join forces with her to protect the world of the living from a malevolent and terrifying ghost named Viker.

Middle school meets a sci-fi epic in Michael Merschel’s Revenge of the Star Survivors, a book which could double for another of Muse’s more prog-rocky, multi-movement compositions. Clark Sherman is an eighth-grader obsessed with the sci-fi show Star Survivors, and views everything in his miserable new school through the lens of the show, whether it be hostile natives (violent bullies) or his fiendishly evil Principal Denton. But then he meets a few kindred spirits who make him realize he’s not alone in this world.

Canadian Wesley King wrote the book Dragons vs. Drones, in which a young computer genius transports himself into a realm populated by giant dragons (and – sometimes – people who ride them), pursued by deadly sleek, high-tech government drones. Given Muse did a whole album just about drones, you know this is right up their alley.

YOUNG ADULT

Fewer YA book titles match that fear of technology so prevalent in Muse songs than Killer Content by Kiley Roache. And in the case of the book, there are many reasons to be afraid, as a group of famous TikTokers descend into paranoia and backstabbing when one of them is found dead in the infinity pool at their beachfront Malibu mansion, And no amount of “stitching” will put them back together again!

Of course, there’s also Chaos Theory by Nic Stone, with a title we’re shocked isn’t already the name of a Muse song. The book has less to do with that mathematical concept that Jeff Goldblum talks about in Jurassic Park, and more to do with unlikely romances. Two teens – one, a certified genius living with a diagnosed mental disorder, and the other a politician’s son who is running from his own addiction and grief – find something in each other. But their connection threatens to pull their universes apart the closer they get to one another.

Terrors from above abound in the songs of Muse, which is why Hunted by the Sky by Tanaz Bhathena is a perfect fit for this list. The book follows a young heroine, Gul, on a journey of discovery, warrior magic, and forbidden romance in a fantasy world (Ambar) inspired largely by Indian history and myth. And while the novel is more in the realm of fantasy than technological apocalypse, the title alone makes it the right choice here.

We can’t talk about the songs of Muse without noting that Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao (now out in paperback!) would double as a perfect song title – and even song concept. Giant transforming robots piloted by teenagers that can battle aliens outside the Great Wall of China? And the girls die from the process until 18-year-old Zetian demonstrates she’s able to reverse the process? Muse wishes they thought up a song with that plot!

In the realm of YA books that have fitting titles, but stories that may be less so falls Free Radicals by Lila Reisen. The book does have some thematic connections – fighting power and injustice – since it follows Afghan-American Mafi’s calamitous sophomore year in high school when she accidentally exposes family secrets, putting her family back in Afghanistan in danger. This is all done as she is dispensing small doses of justice as the school’s secret avenger “the Ghost of Santa Margarita High.”

Finding Jupiter by Kelis Rowe can fit in that same category. The title makes the story seem interplanetary, but its story of a fraught but star-crossed romance set against the backdrop of a Memphis roller rink is down-to-earth in its poignancy. It also features a fair deal of found poetry – and what is poetry if not lyrics?

Though it could refer to a computer network outage, Black Internet Effect by Shavone Charles and illustrated by Alex Lukashevsky actually outlines the author, musician, model, and technology executive’s epic journey through Google, Twitter, and more, and how it shaped her mission to make space for herself and other young women of color both in the online and physical worlds.

No, it’s not the new album from Muse. It’s the new YA novel from Morgan Rhodes: Echoes and Empires! In a world where magic is rare, illegal, and always deadly, one girl – Josslyn Drake – finds herself infected by a dangerous piece of magic after a robbery gone wrong at the Queen’s Gala. Now sharing the memories of an infamously evil warlock, Joss needs the magic removed before it corrupts her soul and kills her. But who can she trust to help her when practicing magic comes with a death penalty?

Finally, what would a Muse-song-like-titles list be without at least one entry from bestselling science fiction writer Brandon Sanderson? We’ve narrowed it down to one book: Cytonic. The third in Sanderson’s Skyward series, it stars Spensa, a girl who becomes a Defiant Defense Force pilot and travels beyond the stars to save the world she loves from destruction. And in this installment of the series, Spensa learns about the alien weapon that the Superiority – the governing galactic alliance bent on dominating all human life – plans to use in their war, and desperately seeks a way to stop it.

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Tundra Telegram: Books to Geek Out Over

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we draw on topics that we’re all fanboying and fangirling over, and recommend some books to keep the excitement onward and upward.

Unless you have curated a completely geek-free social media feed, you know that last weekend the San Diego Comic-Con took over southern California, wrapping up on July 24, and previewing the biggest and newest things in comic books, science fiction, video games, and much more. Whether you were more thrilled to see the trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever or Sarah Michelle-Gellar making a surprise appearance at the Teen Wolf panel, the return of Comic-Con had a little something for everyone.

To mark the occasion, we’re recommending books that are not comic books themselves, nor do they feature comic characters (like the great DC Icons YA series). Instead, they are books about comic books, RPGs, and fandoms. Get your geek on, and find your next great read below!

PICTURE BOOKS

For some comic book fans, no matter their age, there are few words as thrilling as There’s a Superhero in Your Book, which is the title of a book by Tom Fletcher and Greg Abbott. Even better, this picture book is interactive, so young readers can enjoy tapping, stretching, and whizzing this book around as they help the superhero defeat the villain and save the day – while discovering the real superpower of kindness.

If that sounds a bit too stimulating for your young reader, we can recommend Even Superheroes Have to Sleep by Sara Crow and Adam Record. Little kids will enjoy this rhyming story that tricks lulls them into bedtime with the promise that all their heroes are getting tucked into bed, too. (You know Sleepwalker loves his shut-eye!) And there’s a companion book called Even Superheroes Use the Potty where you can (maybe?) learn how Iron Man goes to the washroom in that suit!

If the young readers in your life are wild about superhero movies and games, they may relate to the main character of Max and the Superheroes by Rocio Bonilla and Oriol Malet. Max and his friends love learning about superheroes and their superpowers. Everyone has a favorite, and Max’s is Megapower: she’s brave, tames animals, has x-ray vision, is super smart, can fly – and just happens to be Max’s mom. (So it’s perfect for Mother’s Day, as well.)

And for something a little different, you can learn about the origins of gaming with Blips on a Screen by Kate Hannigan and Zachariah OHora. It’s a picture book biography about Ralph Baer, a Jewish refugee who pioneered home video games and launched a worldwide obsession. Considered the “Father of Video Games,” there’d be no Xbox or Nintendo Switch without him!

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

Where would the MCU be without Stan Lee, the writer who co-created many of Marvel’s signature characters? Find out more, true believers, in Who Was Stan Lee? by Geoff Edgers and John Hinderliter, a book that chronicles how a kid from the Bronx created a comic book empire (with more than a little help from Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and a roster of talented artists).

What if you’re at the stage that you want to start – like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – to make your own comics? You might like Doodleville by Chad Sell. Yes, it is a graphic novel, but it’s also about young artists in the school’s art club and the power of creativity: specifically, how one member’s (Drew’s) artistic creations come to life and wreak havoc on the other kids’ drawings of heroes.

Or maybe they would like Stephen Shaskan’s Pizza and Taco: Super-Awesome Comic, in which the beloved anthropomorphic foodstuffs decide to collaborate on a comic book, but must overcome their deep-seated artistic differences to make a great story.

But if your young readers would like something a little more hands-on, you’ll want Jess Smart Smiley’s Let’s Make Comics: An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons. This is this an honest-to-goodness, all-ages activity book that makes use of humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics. By the time you’re done, you’ll have a bunch of short comics under your belt – and it even comes recommended by Narwhal and Jelly creator Ben Clanton!

What’s more appropriate than a novel that takes place at a comic convention? Marthe Jocelyn, Richard Scrimger, and Claudia Davila’s book Viminy Crowe’s Comic Book opens at the Toronto comic-con, where two very different kids – geek Wylder Wallace and aloof Addy Crowe – find themselves drawn (literally) into the fantastic world of a hit comic book.

Vera Vance: Comics Star by Claudia Mills and Grace Zong, spotlights a third-grader who signs up for a comics camp after-school program, much to the chagrin of her mother. But Vera loves everything comics and starts making her own with the encouragement of friends and the teachers of her camp. And in an inversion of Viminy Crowe, it all leads up to a local comic convention, in which Vera hopes to enter an original comics contest – if only her mother will let her go!

In Stink: Superhero Superfan by Megan McDonald and Peter H. Reynolds, the popular character discovers a box of old comics about a superhero he’s never heard of: Super Gecko! Before long, Stink becomes Super Gecko’s biggest fan. Then he starts receiving mysterious notes signed by Super Gecko himself. Can Stink do some detective work worthy of S.G. and find out who is sending the letters before the Gecko gets a dark and gritty reboot?

A contemporary graphic novel that combines OCD with AD&D, Just Roll with It by Veronica Agarwal and Lee Durfey-Lavoie follows Maggie, who is shy, doesn’t know anyone at her school, and deals with anxiety and OCD. She also loves Dungeons and Dragons (and other role-playing games), so her twenty-sided die (D20, for those in the know) helps her make decisions – just like Two-Face and his lucky quarter in the Batman comics!

And for the young nonfiction comic fan, check out Comics Confidential by Leonard S. Marcus, an anthology of interviews and original comics by today’s foremost graphic novelists (Kazu Kibuishi, Gene Luen Yang, Hope Larson), who talk all about the highs and lows of making comics! It has lots of great advice for young comic writers and illustrators!

YOUNG ADULT

Chaotic Good by Whitney Gardner is like a comic-con Twelfth Night (or She’s the Man, if you prefer). Cameron is a cosplay wizard and aspiring fashion designer. When her costumes win a competition, male fans troll her, accusing her of not being a “real” fan. After a move, she discovers the local comic shop, managed by the exact kind of male gatekeeper who forced her to flee the online world. So she borrows her twin brother’s clothes, poses as a boy, and easily enters the local nerd inner sanctum (and their ongoing D&D game). And things get even more complicated when she develops a crush on one of those D&D adventurers!

If comic-con-adjacent romances are your thing, you need to read Geekerella by Ashley Poston, a fan-fic twist on the Cinderella story about geek girl Ellie Wittimer, the worlds’ biggest fan of sci-fi TV series Starfield who wins a trip to the ExcelsiCon Cosplay Ball and gets to meet a teen actor from the new film reboot, Darien Freeman. Will Ellie hit it off with her Federation Prince? Or will her stepsisters ruin things for her again?

And if you enjoy Geekerella, you might like the follow-up, The Princess and the Fangirl, a geeky take on The Prince and the Pauper! Imogen Lovelace is a fangirl who doesn’t want her favourite Starfield character, Princess Amara, to get killed off. Jessica Stone is the teen actress who plays Amara and wants out of the franchise. And – coincidentally – they look a lot like each other. Parent Trap-style, a deal is struck, but will fans catch on to their scheme?

For more geek love, you need Melissa Keil’s Life in Outer Space, in which self-described, seventeen-year-old Sam Kinnison (no relation) loves horror movies and World of Warcraft and his loser friends. Then a cool girl named Camilla Carter enters his life – she also loves W.O.W., and wants to be Sam’s friend, which throws his life upside-down is this funny love-letter to geeks.

If you want to read some nonfiction from a famous geek girl, then you want The Fangirl’s Guide to the Universe by Sam Maggs, author of numerous comics and video games (and former on-air host for Nerdist). This handbook is packed with tips, playthroughs, and cheat codes for girls into geeks stuff, including how to make nerdy friends, how to rock cosplay, to defeat internet trolls (very important), and how to attend your first con. It includes advice from Sam as well as other fangirl faves like Danielle Paige, Rainbow Rowell, and Preeti Chibber!

See you all in the funny pages!